​There is sad news from the world of fringe archaeology. Tour guide John Anthony West, who appeared in the 1993 Mysteries of the Sphinx​ documentary and inspired Graham Hancock, announced that he is suffering from Stage 4 cancer, and he is asking his friends and followers to give him $115,000 to pay for “alternative” cancer treatments. West chose to forgo mainstream treatments in favor of what Skeptical Inquirer had deemed the “unproven” cancer cure of Stanislaw Burzynski, who faced legal proceeding last year for “medical malfeasance.” “The Rogue Oncologist meets the Rogue Egyptologist, soon with your help,” states West’s crowdfunding page. West is asking for money because insurance will not pay for unproven treatments. I wish West the best and hope he will go into remission, but I fear that choosing a path in line with his belief that mainstream science is flawed will not produce his desired outcome.

​Meanwhile, a humorous satire of fringe history from coffee website Sprudge claims looks into whether the Freemasons and space aliens are secretly controlling the world through the coffee industry. The Starbucks mermaid looks a lot like Oannes, the space-fish from Sirius, after all!

Last night I finished reading Jason Reza Jorjani’s Prometheus and Atlas, a philosophical treatise allegedly about the role of the supernatural in culture, and it was … different. I must concede that I have never before read a fringe author who openly advocated for an “Aryan world order” based on returning to the primitive Indo-European (i.e., Aryan) “world religion.” If the phrase “Aryan world order” sounds odd, it’s because it has a disreputable history. Although Jorjani falsely implies that it comes from the Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy, the phrase is best known from its use in white nationalist William L. Pierce’s works. He is the infamous author of The Turner Diaries, the novel that inspired the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The phrase was also the name of a Welsh pro-Nazi group, and it can be found in Hitler’s early letters.

As the book moved toward its end point, Jorjani became more insistent that Aryans were the chosen people of the world. When he posted parts of this same chapter online, he selectively edited out his most blatant white nationalist statements. I want to compare the online version to the printed version of his passage describing the Buddha as a white Aryan superman:

ONLINEThe Buddha was a light-skinned blue eyed Aryan whose father was a feudal lord and who was expected to become a knight. In his late writings, Nishida Kitaro explains how it is that “Indian culture”, from which Japan inherited Buddhism (including the symbol of the swastika that is ubiquitous at Japanese temples) and which shares the Aryan or ‘Indo-European’ ethnic roots of European culture, “has evolved as an opposite pole to modern European culture… and may thereby be able to contribute to a global modern culture from its own vantage point.” What is the “global modern culture” that Nishida envisions?​

PRINTThe Buddha was a light-skinned, blue-eyed Aryan whose father was a feudal lord and who was expected to become a knight. In his late writings, Nishida Kitaro explains how it is that “Indian culture,” from which Japan inherited Buddhism (including the symbol of the swastika that is ubiquitous at Japanese temples) and which shares the Aryan, or “Indo-European,” ethnic roots of European culture, “has evolved as an opposite pole to modern European culture… [and] may thereby be able to contribute to a global modern culture from its own vantage point.” What is the “global modern culture” that Nishida envisions, and in what way can it be conceived of as an Aryan world order?

​Did you catch the difference?

In the printed version, Jorjani makes plain that his interest in Kitaro Nishida, who died in 1945, and the Kyoto School is essentially because Nishida was a Germanophile whose school of philosophy helped to justify Japan’s alliance with Germany and entry into World War II. In the online version, the subhead, added for the adaptation, falsely attributes to him an advocacy for “an Indo-European planetary hegemony based on a future pan-Aryan religion.” To that end, Jorjani praises the Japanese for moving “beyond” what he calls “Asian values” by becoming Western and therefore more “Aryan.” As honorary Aryans, the Japanese have a special, if secondary, place in his proposed pan-Aryan world Reich.

You will remember this praise because it is the same praise Hitler gave to the Japanese in making them official “honorary Aryans” in 1936. I would be remiss if I did not note that the claim was widespread in the West. Theodore Roosevelt, for example, praised the Japanese for their Westernization, though the Nazis took the claims much farther.

Nishida, for what it’s worth, wasn’t as pro-Aryan or pro-war as Jorjani made him seem, but there was a disturbing pattern throughout the book. Every philosopher whose name I wasn’t familiar with, upon researching, turned out to be an influence on Nazis, an actual Nazi party member, a onetime member of the Nazi armed forces, or an apologist for Nazism. In a book devoted to philosophy, I would estimate than at least 75% of the philosophers discussed were German, and in total all but a handful like William James and Jacques Vallée (who isn’t actually a philosopher) fell into one of those National Socialist-adjacent categories.

I had never heard the claim that the Buddha was a white guy before. It turns out that there is a tradition that the Buddha (Siddhārtha Gautama) had blue eyes. Blue eyes can be found in parts of the subcontinent. They are one of the 32 signs of a Great Man in Buddhism. (Flat feet are another!) I am less able to source claims that the Buddha had red hair and white skin. The claim of red hair does appear in literature, but usually in describing certain artistic depictions of the Buddha, in which he has red hair to contrast with his black skin. I find that the Theosophists tried to racialize Buddhism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by trying to make it into an Indo-European faith. Here is what Anagārika Dharmapāla, Sri Lankan colleague of Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, the founders of the Theosophical Society, said of it: Buddhism is “an Aryan religion founded upon the Aryan Dharma, promulgated by an Aryan, preached by the Aryans to the Aryans.”

This Theosophical idea, the final form of old colonialist narratives that sought to propose that all good things on the subcontinent came from the Aryan invasion, seems to have flowed directly into Jorjani’s work, possibly through Nazi apologetics. You will recall that Heinrich Himmler sent an expedition to Tibet in the 1930s tin the hope of finding remnant Aryan populations among Tibetan Buddhists. According to biographers of Himmler, the SS leader was influenced by Theosophy and explicitly sought connections between primitive German Aryanism and Indian and Tibetan religious traditions. Himmler’s Ahnenerbe explicitly studied Buddhism in order to justify its “Aryan” origins and attempted to constructed from it an Aryan religion that would replace “Jewish” Abrahamic faith.

Does it surprise you that Jorjani also advocates using Buddhism as a model for an Aryan world religion that can serve as a bulwark against Abrahamic faiths?

Every part of his book is white nationalist apologetics, barely disguised. Even the most innocent-seeming claims, and even the occasional praise of non-German cultures, is really just warmed over Nazism, stripped of its one-time political utility and parroted back as an article of faith.

L. Ron Hubbard, in claiming to be Metteya Buddha (the successor to Shakyamuni Buddha) claimed that there was prophecy that the Metteya Buddha would have red hair, which was a trait of L. Ron Hubbard. But I trust L. Ron Hubbard less than I trust Christian apologists.

See, for evidence about Hubbard: http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/3700/buddhism-and-scientology

Buddhism is superior to all religions focused around god-worship. But it cannot support racism. The Buddha Shakyamuni condemned the caste system; why would he support racism?

May your research into Buddhism lead you to convert to it, just as I converted to it.

Reply

Weatherwax

1/24/2017 10:09:26 pm

Buddhists are just as irrational, misogynistic, and violent as any other religious group.

And justifying victim blaming as just suffering the consequences of something you did in a previous life? No thanks.

Reply

A Buddhist

1/25/2017 09:10:04 am

Where are the dozens of Buddhist terrorist groups, the Buddhists flying airplanes into buildings? Where is the condemnation of women teaching men?

You misunderstand karma. For a true understanding, see the Tittha Sutta at: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.061.than.html.

In it, the Buddha Shakyamuni says: "There are brahmans & contemplatives who hold this teaching, hold this view: 'Whatever a person experiences — pleasant, painful, or neither pleasant nor painful — that is all caused by what was done in the past.' There are brahmans & contemplatives who hold this teaching, hold this view: 'Whatever a person experiences — pleasant, painful, or neither pleasant nor painful — that is all caused by a supreme being's act of creation.' There are brahmans & contemplatives who hold this teaching, hold this view: 'Whatever a person experiences — pleasant, painful, or neither pleasant nor painful — that is all without cause & without condition.'

Not the Comte de Saint Germain

1/25/2017 09:58:26 pm

The persecution of the Muslim Rohingya by Buddhists in Myanmar comes to mind. That's not to say that Buddhists are "just as violent as any other religious group," which is a lazy generalization, but it proves that Buddhists aren't immune to the temptation of religious violence.

Americanegro

1/26/2017 06:41:08 am

Dude, you need to be stopping all your posts about your imaginary uncorrect understanding of Buddhism. I don't care what the cause is, you're not helping it.

Reply

A Buddhist

1/26/2017 08:08:09 am

In what way am I spreading imaginary uncorrect understanding of Buddhism? Please tell me, and I would appreciate that.

I would guess that if this "Aryan World Order" comes into the world, makers of Brown Shirts should to well. They did ok, at least until 1945.

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DaveR

1/24/2017 03:26:28 pm

Maybe Hugo Boss will design some nice uniforms for them to wear at their marches.

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Shane Sullivan

1/24/2017 03:13:58 pm

My sympathies to Mr. West.

I wonder how Jorjani plans to square this pan-Aryan Buddhism with his explicit, almost worshipful affection for titans gods. Historically speaking, Buddhism hasn't been terribly open to that sort of reverence of deities.

Jason, I know you've toyed with the notion of writing a non-academic review of Prometheus and Atlas, and for what it's worth, I'd be interested in reading an in-depth treatment of this garbage.

Reply

A Buddhist

1/24/2017 04:57:37 pm

Maybe, given his penchant for getting involved in controversial issue, Jorjani could wade into the Dorje Shugden controversy. By supporting Dorje Shugden worship, he would support Buddhism and deity worship at the same time!

Reply

Americanegro

1/26/2017 06:45:07 am

If you read the transcripts of the Tibetan Government in Exile on this matter, you get a whole different picture.

You really don't know what you're talking about. The less you post, the better. Take care of your various ailments. They cause you to post nonsense.

A Buddhist

1/26/2017 08:16:35 am

Americanegro,

Thank you for giving me a specificish criticism. It is true that I know very little about Dorje Shugden, but he and his worshippers are associated with the Geluk. I follow another sect, which regards the Geluk as misguided for, among other matters, a strange presentation of Buddha-Nature. The minutiae of Geluk rituals is therefore unknown to me. But I make no claim otherwise. All that I know is that Dorje Shugden is a deity whose veneration is controversial within the Geluk sect of Buddhism.

Americanegro, are you claiming that my cerebral palsy causes me to post nonsense? What is the nonsense?

Americanegro

1/26/2017 08:35:37 pm

You've had to retract a post on Buddhism because someone pointed out it was wrong, and you've blamed a bad post on some disorder or other. I'm not your secretary, you do the research.

"By supporting Dorje Shugden worship, he would support Buddhism and deity worship at the same time!"

"It is true that I know very little about Dorje Shugden"

A Buddhist

1/27/2017 07:57:25 am

Americanegro,

How is there a contradiction between the statements

"By supporting Dorje Shugden worship, he would support Buddhism and deity worship at the same time!"

"It is true that I know very little about Dorje Shugden"

I know enough about Dorje Shugden to know that he is a deity whose worship is controversial within Geluk Buddhism, but know little beyond this. In the same way, a person on the street might say "I know enough about Zeus to know that he is a deity whose worship is controversial within post-Nicene Christianity, but know little beyond this."

Only Me

1/24/2017 04:10:26 pm

West's situation reminds me of something I read about Steve Jobs. I don't know for certain if it was true, but Jobs allegedly expressed regret for not using standard cancer treatments. I sincerely hope West opts to use those treatments before it's too late.

Jorjani is laughable. He says he's not a white nationalist, but his book is evidence to the contrary. I'd have more respect for him if he at least had the courage of his convictions.

Reply

DaveR

1/24/2017 04:25:13 pm

That's what Jobs' biographer claims. He says Jobs realized he waited too long and wasted time on acupuncture, fruit drinks, and spiritual healings and that had he gone with Western medicine when first diagnosed he might have been completely cured. By the time Jobs went with what his doctors wanted it was too late, the cancer had spread.

Reply

Only Me

1/24/2017 04:36:13 pm

Thanks, DaveR. Like I said, I wasn't entirely sure that was true.

I do hope West seeks the right treatment. Even at Stage IV, the cancer can be treated with chemo, radiation or surgery.

Weatherwax

1/24/2017 10:37:03 pm

Steve Jobs believed in new age ideas that were rather like "The Secret". You could alter reality by concentrating really hard. It was coined a "reality distortion field" by his employees. It did lead to some brilliant thinking and accomplishments that most people thought couldn't be done. But it also lead to some spectacular failures, like that it could cure cancer.

DaveR

1/25/2017 09:09:32 am

Weatherwax,

The biographer said the same thing, that Jobs believed in wishful thinking, and since it had worked in the past, it would work with his cancer.

Pacal

1/24/2017 08:46:54 pm

The Turner Diaries are a "white" racist wet dream fantasy. A very accurate description of the contents of the book is "The Joy of Genocide".

The author, a loathsome neo-nazis, positively creams himself over and over again writing about how all the "sub-human" (snark) will be exterminated. Again and again out author writhes in ecstatic joy in descriptions of non-whites being machined gunned to death in vicious massacres, being nuke bombed, starved etc., etc.

The author was clearly someone who looked forward to murdering vast numbers of human beings.

It is murderous crap like The Turner Diaries that ensure that neo-Nazis are indeed loathsome.

Reply

Americanegro

1/27/2017 02:20:37 am

Wow, PACAL, you seem to be having a "wet dream" yourself. You like to talk about men "creaming" themselves. Moving the heck on...

Sorry Jason, gotta go point-counterpoint with you on this one:

"William L. Pierce...is the infamous author of The Turner Diaries, the novel that inspired the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995."

This is equivalent to saying that Catcher In The Rye was responsible for the already long overdue murder of John "Wifebeater" Lennon.

For the cause of Oklahoma City, look to the murder of a woman and child at Ruby Ridge by FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi who at this time is still stealing oxygen from basically everyone.

He was also involved in the slaughter and burning to death of innocent women and children in the Branch Davidian Waco Texas warcrime.

Reply

A Buddhist

1/27/2017 10:38:25 am

Are you suggesting that he should be killed? What a major flaw in thought, I think - to condemn a person for killing innocent people but then to urge that such a person be killed. What says the Dhammapada?
3. "He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who harbor such thoughts do not still their hatred.
4. "He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred.
5. Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.
6. There are those who do not realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels.

Jb

1/28/2017 09:25:49 am

The Welsh "Aryan world order" was, I think, an invention of the British double agent Juan Pujol Garcia in his role as the Abwher`s man in Britain.

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